Kattiera Nana I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Diagonaldi Very well executed

Organnall Too much about the plot just didn't add up, the writing was bad, some of the scenes were cringey and awkward,

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

mark.waltz There's nothing to find offensive in "How to Murder Your Wife" except its almost two hour running time where the funniest thing is the gap in Terry-Thomas's teeth and the droll way he has of saying his lines. He must have improvised some of them because the lack of funny dialog in the rest of the script doesn't belly the wit in his character.Those expecting a 60's view of the theory "Men are From Mars/Women are from Venus" will be sadly disappointed. Even so-called women haters will be furious that the only thing to hate about these women is that they don't warrant being hated, only pitied for being sitcomishly annoying. And feminists too won't find anything new to claim offense to; The men here only bash women for the same argument they have had for decades-being too motherly, coddling, nagging, and lightly controlling. The idea of a showdown between the sexes does make for an appealing black comedy that could have been truly fresh, but unfortunately, the writers wimped out. They only added a lot more sex.While the Doris Day/Rock Hudson sex comedies (without the sex) were the opening Pandora's Box of a slew of similar films throughout the 60's, more films added a lot more eroticism with a European flavor. "How to Murder Your Wife" takes Italian blonde beauty Virni Lisi, throws her in as comic strip writer Jack Lemmon's unplanned trip to a Justice of the Peace, and motivates him to write a series of strips where he reveals a plan to kill off the fictional wife of a bachelor obviously based on him. Lisi gets wind of all this, flies the coup, and Lemmon is suddenly accused of murder.The film is all a cop-out on what could have been a delicious caper that somehow turns out happy. But we've seen the supposedly deceased story before ("Irma La Douce" and "The Art of Love") in 60's sex comedies, and the set-up is so obviously easy to fix that it ends up being predictable. It makes no sense that Lemmon, even intoxicated, would wed Lisi, no matter how much in lust with her he was. Lisi, too, may be desirable, but her character is so cloying that there is little desire for the two to reconcile. Poor Claire Trevor (as the wife of Lemmon's lawyer) has to do a drunken dance that is more embarrassing than funny, and the usually funny Mary Wickes does nothing but cry and drink glass after glass of champagne after Lemmon shows up at his lawyer's office for an annulment. If it wasn't for the fabulously droll Terry-Thomas, this movie would be a total bomb!

gelman@attglobal.net This film strives desperately to be funny and only occasionally succeeds. Oddly, Jack Lemmon mostly functions as a straight man in those moments. The comedy is supplied by one of the other actors: Terry-Thomas as his valet, Eddie Mayehoff as his incompetent, hen-pecked lawyer, Clair Trevor as the lawyer's wife, Virna Lisi as his own wife or Sidney Blackstone as a frequently drunk judge proclaiming that he is "as sober as a judge." The premise -- that Lemmon's character is a dedicated bachelor who accidentally marries the woman (Lisi) that rose out of a cake at a drunken, guys-only party -- might be funny but it usually isn't. Ms. Lisi, an Italian beauty who made a couple of Hollywood films, is asked to be beautiful, speak Italian in rapid outbursts and to perform a sexy dancing routine at one point in the story. She does those three things efficiently. Lemmon's role is absurd to begin with, and it doesn't get a lot better as the film progresses. It doesn't much matter that the story is ridiculous. Many successful comedies are ridiculous. Rather, the film often fails because the effort to provoke laughter is simply too strenuous.

kylopod At one point in "How to Murder Your Wife," a doctor explains to the unhappily married Jack Lemmon that a pill he subscribes is perfectly harmless unless taken with alcohol. Mixed with liquor, it makes a person engage in strange behaviors before collapsing on the floor. Appropriately enough, the people who made this movie--including, incredibly, George Axelrod, the screenwriter for "The Manchurian Candidate" and "Breakfast at Tiffany's"--must have slipped such a pill into their own drink before working on the film.I mean it. Quite a few movies from the mid- to late-'60s were like this, showing the influence of, shall we say, something a bit more stimulating than the average pharmaceutical. And while this movie may not be as far out as "Magical Mystery Tour," it doesn't look like the work of a mind that was totally sober. The plot is absurdly illogical in an almost dreamlike fashion, and although it is presented as a comedy, it thinks it has stumbled upon deep truths about the war between the sexes.Lemmon stars as a popular cartoonist who has performers play out the story-lines he devises, after which he uses photos from the act to help him draw his comic strip, a serialized adventure. This is an intriguing idea, and the scenes involving the design of his strip are the best parts of the film. I wish they had been attached to a movie that maintained this level of creativity throughout.Lemmon wakes up one morning in bed with a beautiful Italian woman (Virna Lisi) and discovers that in a drunken stupor at a bachelor party the previous night, they had gotten married to each other. This is not exactly an original plot device, but it's something that normally comes at the end of a movie, as a kind of cinematic punchline. It makes for a weak opener, because it's a situation that should be easy to resolve. The lengths to which the characters go to avoid doing the obvious is a wonder to behold. The film is heavy on Idiot Plot--the problem that would go away instantly if the characters weren't idiots--and it continues well beyond the initial setup, all the way to the inane courtroom scene at the climax.First, there's Lemmon's lawyer friend (Eddie Mayehoff) who is apparently the only lawyer alive in New York. How do we know? Well, for one thing, the mansion-dwelling Lemmon never once considers fishing for a new lawyer, despite the fact that this one is a cartoonishly inept milquetoast kept on a leash by his domineering wife. For another, in the course of the movie he will serve as different types of lawyers, of which criminal defense attorney is only the last.Terry-Thomas, who narrates the early scenes, plays Lemmon's butler/manservant/photographer. Fearing that the marriage will upset their gay relationship (in the "happy" sense...perhaps), he threatens to quit if Lemmon doesn't have the marriage annulled, which of course is exactly what Lemmon wants to do but finds himself strangely unable to. This is where the film begins to get surreal and dreamlike, as Lemmon can't accomplish what should be an amazingly simple task because all the other characters keep talking loudly over him and not listening to what he has to say except to misunderstand it.The filmmakers must have gotten so hung up on the central premise--a cartoonist thinking up ways to murder his wife--that they didn't bother to come up with a plausible path to get there. Logic and common sense get thrown to the wind so that the Lemmon character can dream up a murder scenario for a situation with several perfectly sensible alternatives.I have to admit I expected the murder plot to be more fun. I imagined some elaborate Rube Goldberg scheme (this is a cartoonist, after all), or perhaps a series of plans that keep going wrong. Evidently, it's just not that type of comedy. It seems to promise a colorful outcome with its "gloppita-gloppita" machine shown in the first scene. Though crucial, the machine plays a smaller role than we might expect from a movie titled "How to Murder Your Wife." The film has other ambitions, and they come off heavy-handed and insulting.Apart from its flaws as a comedy and its far-fetched plot, what really got to me was the film's shameless misogyny. It develops as its principal theme a sort of bizarro reverse feminism, calling for the men in American society to rise up and assert themselves against the women who have enslaved them in unhappy marriages. And this isn't just some self-consciously ironic attempt to turn women's lib on its head: the movie seems at least half-serious on this point. It attacks women's traditional roles not out of sympathy for the women, who are depicted as mindless but malevolent creatures, but to give the men the freedom to pursue their ambitions, such as hanging out with their buddies at their all-male clubs, in peace.I'm used to seeing older movies with sentiments that now look a bit dated, but I wasn't sure what to make of this one. It came out at a time when many of the old gender stereotypes in Hollywood were breaking down. If the film was intended as a backlash, it's a pretty lame one. I don't know whether the weird scene in the courtroom at the end was supposed to be funny or inspiring, but it succeeds at being neither of those things, and it leaves us with a peculiar feeling of discomfort.

alangalpert This is one of the funniest and best-written comedies I have ever seen. Jack Lemmon is in top form, and Virna Lisi (in her first American film) is beautiful, sexy and delightful. Stanley (Lemmon) is a successful cartoonist and confirmed bachelor. He is ably assisted by his manservant, Charles, played by the always-funny Terry-Thomas. Not only is Charles a confirmed bachelor, also, but he refuses to work for any man who isn't. After a riotous night of drinking at a friend's bachelor party, Stanley awakens the next morning to find himself married to the lovely girl who popped out of the cake (Lisi). (Ironically, during the party his friend's marriage was called off.) Stanley remembers nothing, and to make matters worse, his bride speaks nary a word of English. Worse still, she hails from Italy where (at the time) divorce is forbidden. Stanley is desperate for a way to end the marriage, and quickly, but no one is able to help him. In a delicious irony, he slowly develops a fondness for his wife, only to have her leave him when he no longer wants her to. I won't reveal the rest of the plot, but the denouement is inspired, and the ending is laugh-out-loud funny.